The Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, which makes up the core of the story of Hanukkah, lasted from 167 to 160 BCE, but conflict between the Judeans and the Syria-based Greek-speaking empire continued for decades thereafter. Among the subsequent wars described in the first book of Maccabees is that which occurred when Diodotus Tryphon ruled the Seleucid empire. A stone, roughly 1.2 inches long and meant to be used in slingshot, bears witness to this conflict, as the Times of Israel reports:

In 2016, Xiyue Wang, an American citizen and a PhD candidate at Princeton University, traveled to Tehran to improve his Persian, and to conduct archival research on the governance of border provinces in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A few months later he was arrested and sent to the Evin prison, where he was held for 40 months, most of which he spent in solitary confinement. He emerged thoroughly disabused of his former faith in the possibility of U.S conciliation with the Islam Republic. He had a similar change in attitude toward his university. Peter Theroux writes: